"No task is harder than that of writing to the ideas of
another."--JOHNSON.
_Duke._ "If ever thou shalt love,
In the sweet pangs of it, remember me;
For such as I am all true lovers are;
Unstaid and skittish in all things else,
Save in the constant image of the creature
That is beloved....
My life upon it, young as thou art, thine eye
Hath stayed upon some face that it loves;
Hath it not, boy?"
XANTIPPE, BEFORE JEALOUSY.--A FIRST LOVE--BLASTED HOPES.--A DOCTOR'S
STORY.--THE FLIGHT FROM "THE HOUNDS OF THE LAW."--THE EXILE AND
RETURN.--DISGUISED AS A PEDDLER.--ESCAPES WITH HIS LOVE.--ENGLISH
BEAUS.--YOUNG COQUETTES.--A GAY AND DANGEROUS BEAU.--HANDSOME
BEAUS.--LEAP YEAR.--AN OLD BEAU.--BEAUTY NOT ALL-POTENT.--OFFENDED
ROYALTY.--YOUTH AND AGE.--A STABLE BOY.--POET-DOCTOR.
An old lady once said, "I've hearn say that doctors either are, or are
not, great experts in love affairs; I've forgotten which." Just so!
"I would not be a doctor's wife for the world," I have heard many a lady
affirm. True; for few doctors have had the misfortune (or folly) to select
a jealous woman for a life companion.
Socrates, the great philosopher, and physician of the mind, seems to have
had the ugliest tempered woman in the world, whose very name, _Xantippe_,
has passed into a proverb for a scolding wife; yet she was not jealous of
her spouse, but was said to have sincerely loved him; and he bore her
outbursts of temper only as a great philosopher could, which seemed not to
have disturbed the equanimity of his living nor the humor of his dying.
"Crito,"--these were his last words,--"Crito, forget not the cock that I
promised to Esculapius!"
Alas! an affecting satire on philosophy and physic.
[Illustration: MY FIRST LOVE.]
No; we find no cases to record of the jealousies of physicians, or their
wives. All the jealousies of the former are spent on their professional
brethren.
It is a philosophical fact that physicians, of all men, seldom are
involved in disgrace, quarrels, or litigations on account of love affairs.
Yet they have affections, like other men, and above all men know how to
appreciate affection and virtue in woman.